I’ve managed to finally get some games in with my Hapatra deck, and I loved it. It turns out she doesn’t need a lot of mana to get going and hold her own. This is a good thing, because I didn’t get a lot of mana in one the games, and still managed to do well, although with more mana I could won that one game by playing my larger finishers.

I did learn a bit about the deck though; Even though the can function on low mana, it doesn’t want mana sinks like Trigon of Corruption. The Trigon just isn’t a second Serrated Arrows like it was intended. Instead, I’ll probably run Grafted Exoskeleton. Hapatra makes lots and lots of snake tokens, and I’ve experimented with running infect creatures, and now I just want more infect.

Infect doesn’t seem that bad in Commander, from a gameplay perspective. From my design philosophy of “What do I want my opponents to experience while playing this deck?” it’s tension and fear, but it looks a lot more dangerous than it actually is.  Turns out Infect is totally okay for a couple of reasons:

• Most Infect creatures are small and easilly blocked or dealt with.
• If I attack someone with Infect, unlike regular damage, other players often can’t help compound the damage as they mostly attack the regular life total. Infect players have to work alone most of the time.

No, edging the event horizon into unfairness has to do with Archfiend of Ifnir. I really like that card in this deck, and tried to include as many cycling cards as I could fit, and to fit the snake theme, a Noose Constrictor. I’m really hopefull about the Hush I added, because it cycles and there is always someone who has an Enchantment deck of sorts, or at least a pillow fort strategy.

No, the reason the deck threatens to go beyond a good fun deck into linear and overpowered is because Archfiend combos so well with Survival of the Fittest. Survival finds Archfiend and helps discarding cards to activate him. The combo doesn’t win on the spot and takes time to fully set up but I imagine it’ll go a long way wiping opponents boards and help Hapatra create a lot of snake tokens.

I tend not to use a lot of tutor effects, except for land ramp, and Survival ís repeated tutoring, but should come up once every five games or so, so I hope it’s not too linear.